Douglas Engelbart (1925–) is a pioneer in the development of information technology.
Among other accomplishments, he developed the mouse and created the foundation for word–
processing software. In addition, early on he anticipated many of the features and functionalities of the modern computer, such as linking, hypermedia publishing, computer–aided conferencing and context–sensitive help.
Marshall McLuhan took the view that media augment the senses. Increased effectiveness, or augmentation, is also a key theme in Engelbart’s work. By “augmentation” Engelbart means the change that can be achieved through collaboration between and individual and a machine.
By dint of their culture, people have many encoded skills, which allow them to cope in the world. Working with machines, in this case engaging computer–assisted activity, extends this network of skills. Engelbart’s point of departure is the augmentation of a person’s physical and mental capabilities such that he or she can solve complex problems more effectively, more quickly and better. Engelbart predicts that in the future the computer will augment almost everyone’s activities.11 As an academic field, legal informatics seeks to apply technology in order to augment the practices of legal life.
According to Friedmann, in human history our data environment has changed depending on what sense our culture has favoured at any given time. The sensory culture has determined the medium which people have used, that is, the means for augmenting human activity.
11 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 27.
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In classical times, there was a focus on rhythmically articulated, or muse–inspired, speech. The Middle Ages saw a shift towards abstract, written expression based on verbal analogies, symbols and allegories. In the late Middle Ages, Friedmann saw an emphasis on mysticism and non–verbal expression, until in the modern era Newton’s physics reduced reality to the movement of solid bodies in space and thereby gave rise to an emphasis on the sense of motion. The defining criterion for science became accuracy. In Friedmann’s view, the new science of the future would be based on the sense of sight – optics – and that the model for it would be Goethe’s morphology, later interpretations of which predicted that people would develop a new sense that combines all the others.
The consequences of Friedmann’s theory can be seen in the area of legal culture in different eras. In ancient Greece and Rome much was made of masterful performances by virtuoso speakers – sophists and orators, who spoke with singing voices that carried well. In the Middle Ages, the use of parables become a method by which the Church Fathers could derive new social norms from the Bible and continuous revelation. The search for analogies was also a tool in the daily application of the law.
Thanks to modern science, law, too, began to emphasize the opposition to metaphysics that had arisen during the Enlightenment, which had been interpreted in different ways in legal positivism and legal realism. The central concern of legal positivism is that the law in force has been enacted in a formally correct manner, no matter how unfair the content of the law might be. German conceptual jurisprudence made a categorical distinction between the societal impacts of law and its content. Using logical inference, every legal phenomenon could be assigned its proper place in the legal system, with this then used to derive a solution to the problem at hand. In nineteenth–century England the analytical school undertook to define the existing law as precisely as possible in the spirit of Newton’s physics and paid a great deal of attention to how legal language was used. Metaphysics was rejected from a different perspective in nineteenth–century legal realism, which stressed that law is only that which is obeyed in practice. Judicial realism viewed law as the system of norms which figures in the practical work of judges.
Although the young Friedmann represented conceptual jurisprudence in his first publications, his later work could be described as an inquiry in the field of haptics, as it lacked self–evaluation: a punch in the eye was a haptic sensory experience, whereas an optical experience was always a perception constructed by the perceiver. The science Friedmann aspired to, one based largely on symbols, sought to combine facts and values through a
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normativity which had developed precisely as a result of the evolution of the language of the senses. Here Friedmann’s later views represented a morphological natural law of sorts.
Where are we headed next? What will be the sensory culture of the future, how will it be reflected in the media, and how will this then be reflected in legal culture? One answer is digitalization. Digitality emerged as one of the key concepts of the 1990s to emphasize the change, dramatic shift and revolution in media culture. Being digital refers to the transition from what was, on the one hand, an analogue and, on the other, an electromechanical world to the digital age of computers. The notion of “being digital”, as well as that of a transition “from atoms to bits”, was coined by director of MIT’s MediaLab Nicholas Negroponte.12
Digitalization means the breaking down of information into bits, which makes possible its storage, organization and manipulation. Most salient is the ability to render data that occurs in disparate forms in a uniform format. To Negroponte, being digital was more than this, however. It meant detaching information from the material world, from paper and books, and rendering it in a digital world, one deemed to be immaterial. In law, the practical impacts of digitalization are reflected in developments such as legal cybernetics and legal databases, of which the former studies the potential for automatic decision–making using algorithms and artificial intelligence applications. The possibilities of achieving global legal practice are immensely greater with the availability of cases on networks.
Future developments in computer media can be grouped in terms of four phases, which as historical phenomena are partially concurrent: (a) networking, integrating and duplicating media; (b) utopias of interactivity and hypertextuality; (c) a transition from an audiovisual to a sensorimotor media culture; and (d) the integration of media technology with the human body.13 All four phases can be examined in terms of Herman Friedmann’s semiotics of the world of forms. All also have implications for legal culture and law.
Clearly, the four phases overlap to an extent temporally and thematically. For example, sensorimotor media systems that react to movements of the body are also interactive. The different phases and their distinctive features give rise to various types of digital data environments. Here you can distinguish FilmComp, SpaceComp and CyberComp. The first is characterized by a live, illusory visuality on a two–dimensional surface, the second by integration of the media technology into the space around the user and the third by the media representations being constructed directly in the mind. Spatiality and the perception that the data environment surrounds the user are emphasized in the second type, Mark Weiser’s views
12 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 30.
13 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 32.
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on UbiCom (ubiquitous computing, in which digital technology is embedded in the environment, can be considered the precursor of SpaceComp, but his thinking actually puts more emphasis on the networking of different media than on the fundamental notion of SpaceComp whereby the user actively affects his or her data environment through bodily movements registered by sensors. 14
Characteristic of the Internet and of the digital television of tomorrow are increased and diverse program offerings. This development will bring with it more intuitive and easier to use interfaces. With the increased supply, we will see a heightened need to tailor media to one’s own preferences using, for example, an agent powered by artificial intelligence or a television guide. The expanding offerings in the area of popular culture will bring about a restructuring of the means of reception and affect the nature of the personalized reception made possible by tailoring incoming material. Our sensory environment will create new forms of perception, ones we unaware of today. One of the issues which legal informatics has to address is copyright in the case of works of art that people have tailored and shaped to suit their own tastes.
In his article “The Computer for the 21st Century!”, Mark Weiser criticizes the difficulty of using computers. We have to learn technical aspects of IT that are unnecessary for completing the task at hand. Weiser points out that the most effective technologies are those which one does not even notice. They are woven into the fabric of our daily life such that they are indistinguishable from it. Written information is not confined to books, magazines and newspapers but is also conveyed by street signs, notice boards and even graffiti. He notes that even sweets are wrapped in paper with writing on it. The established presence of information that is bound up with literacy commands hardly any special attention on our part. It is difficult to imagine modern life otherwise. Contrasting with such products of literacy technology, silicon–based information technology is far from being part of the environment, Weiser claims.15
Weiser takes the view that despite data pens and laptops, the idea of the personal computer has failed; it is still a utopian notion. With today’s equipment, it is very unlikely that we can make information technology an invisible part of our environment. The applications for today’s personal computers are but the first steps in the overall development. Computers will be linked to one another and vanish into the background.16
14 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 32.
15 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 34.
16 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 34.
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The notion of a hundred computers in one room might seem frightening. However, just like cables in the walls these computers will be out of sight, not distracting. As Weiser maintains, people will simply use them, unaware of them, in order to complete the tasks at hand.
Weiser goes on to point out that, the effectiveness of invisible computer technology does not lie in a single device but in the interaction between devices. Hundreds of processors and displays form more than a graphic user interface; they make for an effective working environment in which things get done.17
A digital data environment in which a single room might have hundreds of invisible computers is a new technonatural environment for human beings. Success in a given environment is governed by the laws of evolution. As evolutionary developments in a species require long periods of time, the planning we do has to take into consideration the constraints of evolutionary theory. The fundamental thesis of Friedmann’s theory of convergent evolution was intended to counter the view that if two organisms had the same structure, they were necessarily descended from a common ancestor, as Darwin assumed. Friedmann’s theory of convergence maintains that a similar structural form can develop twice in different organisms independent of one another, with no need for a common parent. The reason why two separate courses of development produces the same form would be that the structure is optimal for the task at hand. In other words, for different organisms’ similar needs would lead to the development of similar forms. When people’s work and free time are spent in ubiquitous computing rooms with hundreds of digital sensors and interfaces, the design of the rooms should be based on convergent information technology solutions that are optimal for the tasks at hand. There would be lessons to learn from nature in this design.
In the realm of legal culture, UBiComp technology is most closely associate with crime prevention through all–encompassing surveillance and recording. At the same time, privacy becomes a more acute problem, as society takes on Orwellian features. Ubitechnology is totalitarianism’s best friend, whereas the open society has often been based on flexibility and an Americanist ploy.
Particularly during the breakthrough of multimedia and information networks in the 1990s, one heard a great deal about interactivity. There is a true content with interactivity in computer media at least to the extent that playfulness is becoming an integral part of media.
This incorporates movements of the body and the eyes rather than just the eyes: the media experience becomes sensorimotor one. The combination of movement with watching and
17 Ylä–Kotola and Arai 2000: 36–37.
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hearing in games changes the stable data environment of television in a radical way. The hand plays a key role in computer games.
The integration of human beings and technology in cyborg utopias in both bio– and nanotechnologies will diminish the differences between human, animal and machine.
Friedmann’s Goethe–inspired discussion of the new sensibility of the individual of the future contributes a new perspective on this issue, a second perspective is that articulated by of Georg Henrik von Wright, who in his Tiede ja ihmisjärki cites Einstein: “The tragedy of modern man lies – generally speaking – in this: he has created living conditions for himself for which, because of his phylogenetic development, he is not adequate”, continuing. “Is this tragedy destined for permanence? If so, the end can hardly be anything else than the self–destruction of the human species.”18 The design of changes living conditions – the data environment of the future – is thus a matter of survival for the human race. The normative guidance for this design through appropriate legislation could be a challenge for the future of democracy, capitalism and law alike.
18 von Wright 1987: 76.
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